


Aftermath

by Laparoscopic



Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: Post-combat stress reaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 11:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14212593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laparoscopic/pseuds/Laparoscopic
Summary: Susan has trouble getting to sleep after the battle at the mall.





	Aftermath

Susan shook her head sharply, trying to clear her mind. She realized that she had been sitting behind the wheel of her car in the garage at home for several minutes, just staring at the bicycle leaning against the wall in front of her. _How long…?_ she wondered, then shrugged and got out of the car.

As Susan entered the house, she noticed that her mother was in the living room. She grimaced. She had hoped she would be able to slip in without her mother noticing her. She wasn’t sure if her hair was exactly its usual shade, but Agent Cranium had done the best she could.

“Hey, Mom,” said Susan dully as she entered the living room.

Her mother was curled up on the couch, reading a book and sipping a glass of wine. She looked up and smiled at Susan. “You’re home early. How was your evening?”

Susan paused for a moment in the act of hanging up her coat as she contemplated the impossibility of answering that question honestly.

_Well, let’s see, I met my great-to-the-nth grandfather, a half-immortal who by the way looks an awful lot like Dad with pointy ears when he isn’t magically disguised as an elderly history teacher; I met a new…cousin, I guess you’d call her; saw an immortal go nuclear on the entire race of aberrations and get forced into a reset; and, oh, yeah, almost got killed by one of the aforementioned aberrations who looked like a giant talking koala bear. So, you know, a typical evening at the mall._

“Fine,” she said, as she finished hanging up her coat. “I met up with Diane and we hung out for a while.”

“Diane?” Her mother looked puzzled, as if trying to place the name. “Have I met her?”

“No.”

“So who is she?”

 _Someone who looks and sounds enough like me to be your long-lost daughter._ “She’s someone I met through my movie reviews.” Which had the advantage of being at least partially true. Susan had long since resigned herself to having to lie to her mother about things magical, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. She tried to stick to lies of omission as much as possible. Those somehow didn’t feel quite as awful as bald-faced lies.

“Oh.” Her mother looked at her quizzically. “Are you still doing those? You haven’t shown me any in a while.”

Susan blinked, and tried to focus on her mother’s question. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, we’re still doing them, when we have the time.”

“Well, maybe you could show me some more of them sometime.”

Susan shrugged. “Sure. But maybe not right now? I’m kinda beat, and want to head up to bed.”

Her mother looked at her watch. “This early? It’s not even ten, yet.”

“I just want to curl up in bed with a book and unwind.” Another lie. She was pretty sure she couldn’t focus enough to read at the moment.

Her mother smiled. “I can sympathize. Good night, sweetie.”

Susan bent down to give her mother a perfunctory kiss on the cheek before heading upstairs. “G’night, Mom.”

 

* * *

 

Susan managed to hold it together until after she’d changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth. As she set her toothbrush down in its holder, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was _basically_ correct, maybe a little more vibrantly blue than normal, more like how it used to look the first day after a dye job, before the color mellowed out a little. She reached up and ran a hand through her hair, recalling how it looked blonde.

Then she remembered _why_ it had turned blonde, and her hand started to shake.

_I almost died tonight._

_I killed someone tonight._

Everything had happened so quickly, in the midst of so much other action, that she hadn’t had time to emotionally acknowledge those facts. She’d been worrying about other people getting hurt, about Raven facing the monsters with her weapons. Hoping her weapons would endure long enough to be useful for him. Then she’d been worrying about Diane’s emotional state. Although she’d just met the other girl, she felt unusually concerned about her, for her. _What must it be like, to be adopted and suddenly meet your biological father—a half immortal, at that—in the middle of a battle? Well,_ ** _after_** _the battle, but still._ And then after that, there had been the clean-up, and Agent Cranium appearing to help establish a cover-up. She didn’t know why Mr. Verres hadn’t been part of the group responding to the altercation. Cranium had vaguely waved off the question when she’d asked about him, muttering something about multiple crises. Susan had been too tired, the adrenaline starting to wear off, to pursue the question.

Reminded of the fight, she closed her eyes and leaned with both hands on the bathroom counter. She took a deep breath, trying to suppress the sudden shudders running through her body. She felt bile burning in the back of her throat, and clenched her jaw tight.

_I killed someone._

Aberration or not, Susan couldn’t help but be aware that her victim had been human at one point, despite the fact that he’d looked like a giant furry snake. And she’d ended him. Decapitated him. Without hesitation or pity. Not that he deserved either, she knew. _Rationally_ she knew that. He had undoubtedly killed countless people, was long past deserving death, but the emotional impact was still there. He’d been human, once. The handsome human face of the aberration she’d killed in France flashed through her mind.

Her stomach heaved once, twice, and she pivoted hurriedly towards the toilet, making it just in time to not spew all over the bathroom counter or floor. Her knees buckled, and she sank down to kneel in front of the toilet. She was grateful that she and Diane hadn’t had time to get dinner, so her stomach was already mostly empty. There wasn’t much to come up. She retched and spat, the bile burning her throat and sinuses.

Eventually, the spasms passed, and she leaned her head against the wall next to the toilet. The sour, burning taste in her throat made her want to get up and rinse her mouth out, but she felt too weary to stand just yet. She reached up and closed the toilet lid, then flushed away her mess. She closed her eyes and sighed, slumping a little more against the wall.

_He deserved it. He was chasing that woman, might have killed her. I did the right thing._

She _did_ believe that. If she was put in the same situation right now, she’d do the same thing, regrets notwithstanding. But it still haunted her. _Was there something else I could have done?_ She reviewed the events of the fight. Looked at objectively, she was pretty sure it lasted no more than three or four minutes, from when Jerry showed up until Pandora disappeared. But it felt like an eternity. An eternity of stuttering quick decisions, lurching from reaction to action, trying to stay alive.

Her memory flashed back for a moment to the stunned look on the koala aberration’s face when she’d hammered him. He’d looked almost indignant, as if he felt betrayed by prey that would dare fight back. She giggled for a moment at the memory, then clamped a hand over her mouth as the giggles threatened to build and turn hysterical.

She took a deep breath to force down the incipient hysteria, then pushed herself to her feet. She rinsed her mouth out, and drank a few hesitant sips of water. She briefly considered rinsing with some mouthwash, but the thought of an astringent on her acid-ravaged throat discouraged that. She wiped her hands and mouth dry, then headed to bed.

Susan turned down the covers and sat on the edge of her bed, then paused. She wasn’t quite ready to get into bed. Something…she wanted something else, first. But what?

_I really want a hug right now._

It was almost an alien thought for her. But her desire for reassurance and comfort was deep, and physical. She glanced at the time on her phone.

 _Sarah’s probably still on her not-date with Sam. I’d hate to interrupt that._ She rather hoped that at least _one_ friend was having a “normal” evening. She ran down the list of her friends in her head, trying to imagine who might be willing to give her a hug. Who wasn’t busy, or working. And, most importantly, who she might be comfortable hugging. Having eliminated Sarah, that list was empty.

_Well. There’s always the original source…_

Susan got up and grabbed her robe, and slipped it on as she headed back downstairs. She tapped gently on the edge of the doorframe to the living room to get her mother’s attention. Her mother responded with a small smile. “I thought you were going to bed?”

Susan crossed the room and sat down on the couch next to her mother. She stared at the floor in front of her, not looking at her mother. “I…I lied to you. Earlier.” She licked her lips, not sure how to proceed.

“About what?”

Susan took a breath, and looked up at her mother. “I didn’t want to worry you. But. The evening. It _wasn’t_ fine. You’ll probably read about it in the paper tomorrow. There was a…a terrorist attack at the mall.” That being the cover story Agent Cranium had provided. Her mother gasped in shock.

“I saw…someone die,” Susan continued. She closed her eyes. She _really_ wished she could tell her mother the truth, but now was not the time for the lengthy conversation that would be required to tell her about the reality of magic.

“Oh, Susie! How horrible!” Her eyes being closed, she was startled by her mother’s arms embracing her, hugging her tight. She reflexively tensed for a moment, then she exhaled slowly, a lot of the tension melting from her body as she leaned into her mother’s embrace. 

“Yes. It was,” she said softly, and shuddered.

“Oh, my poor girl,” her mother murmured. “How—what—“

“I…don’t think I can talk about it just yet.” Which was true. Even if she had the energy to weave a consistent fabric of lies, she just couldn't imagine talking about it right now. “It’s too…I'm sorry. Could you just hug me? For a little while?”

“Of course, sweetie.” Her mother’s embrace tightened for a moment, and she kissed the side of Susan’s head. Susan relaxed further into the hug. She had been a little afraid that with relaxation would come a release of tears, but instead she just felt more tired. Leadenly so.

Susan gave in to the exhaustion, and pulled her legs up on the couch, curling up on her side with her head in her mother’s lap. Her mother gently stroked her hair, brushing it off her face.

 _I killed him. He deserved it. There was nothing else I could do._ She repeated that to herself over and over, a semi-hypnotic mantra of reassurance. She truly believed that intellectually, but she was still having problems convincing her emotions. She shivered a little, and her mother responded with a soft noise of pained sympathy. It had been years since Susan had allowed herself to take this kind of comfort from her mother, and she found herself gradually relaxing into it. Her racing thoughts slowed down, and became more rational.

 _I did what I could. But I could have done better. I need to talk to Raven about getting some sword lessons._ Having a concrete plan for future action helped her relax even more. Pandora had said she had killed most of the aberrations in the world, but Susan was very aware that “most” was not the same thing as “all.” And as long as there were evil magic users in the world, new aberrations could be born, or made, or whatever was the appropriate term.

Her mother began to hum a little tune, which Susan recognized after a moment as a lullaby from her childhood. Susan smiled as she let the nostalgic tune wash through her, and she finally drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before _Sister 3_ ended, so it may end up being rendered _very_ AU by events depicted by Dan, but I wondered how Susan would cope with the shock of battling aberrations for the first time in years.


End file.
